Drag on ammonite models
Find out more about subscribing to add all events.
Drag on ammonite models
Fri, 28/11/2025 - 14:00 to 14:30
Location:
Speaker:
Bappa Mitra
Synopsis:
Ammonite fossils have been used as proxies in understanding the aspects of evolutionary dynamics,
functional morphologies, biomechanics, etc. The disappearance and reappearance of few shell forms
during four different mass extinction events has led to a question about some shell geometry, some forms
being better than the rest. While seminal work in characterising the drag coefficient (swimming efficiency)
of these creatures have been done in the past (CHAMBERLAIN, 1976), dataset of some shell forms is
missing. The findings of the experiments done in new shell models will be shared in this talk.
Biography:
Bappa is a PhD student working on manufacturing ultralightweight environment-sensing fliers inspired
by the flight of dandelion diaspores. In addition to this project, he has also conducted fluid dynamic
experiments to populate additional dataset to study the swimming behaviour of ammonites (extinct marine creatures). He is a part of VOILAb, University of Edinburgh (https://voilab.eng.ed.ac.uk)
where he is being supervised by Prof. Ignazio Maria Viola, and a part of Smart Systems group (https://
smartsystems.site.hw.ac.uk) led by Prof. Marc Desmulliez at Heriot-Watt University.